Canada

(Today's blogger: Maria) On Saturday, May 29, we got to Seattle and went to the airport to pick up Sitto (that's "Grandma" for all you non-Arab speakers) and drove straight up to Canada. We had been excited for a few weeks once we knew she was flying up to meet us for part of our trip. Once we got into Canada, we went straight to Fr. Michael and Bonnie Gillis' house in Langley, British Columbia. We had met Fr. Michael when he came to Mexico and Bonnie is the person who illustrates all the books we have written by Mother Melania, who we got to see last month. We stayed there overnight and in the morning we went to their church. At church we saw Nick and Kristy Duran, who are friends of ours that used to live near us in Mexico and came to church there. They moved out of Mexico a little before we did. After church, we went to the ferry that would take us to Vancouver Island. We parked the car on the lower level of the ferry and walked up to the upper levels. It's like a mini cruise complete with great views of the ocean and all the islands we passed.
When we got to Vancouver Island we checked into our hotel in the town of Victoria. The next morning we went to the Parliament building (Victoria is the capital of British Columbia). We hooked up with a tour and after that we sat in on the afternoon question session. That's where these adults who are supposed to be leaders get up and argue.
The next day we went to the famous Butchart Gardens. It was really pretty so you can't blame us for taking 200 pictures. At the gift shop we bought some seeds to plant in our new house (no, we don't know where that will be yet).
The next day we picked up and left Vancouver Island on the ferry and spent the rest of the day in the city of Vancouver with Kristy Duran. We walked around and saw Gastown and the big torch stand from the Winter Olympics. We spent the night at the Gillis' again and the next day headed back to Seattle and the U.S.